ESPN NBA insider reveals inside story on how he broke historic Luka Doncic trade: ‘My hands were shaking’
ESPN’s Shams Charania shared how nerve-wracking it was to break the news of Luka Doncic getting sent to the Los Angeles Lakers in a seismic trade that shifted the NBA landscape.
At 12.12am ET on February 2, Charania broke the news of the Doncic-Anthony Davis trade. The post, which shook the entire NBA fanbase, has since gained over 300,000 likes on X.
Speaking on The Young Man and The Three on Thursday, the renowned NBA Insider shared how he asked his source ‘Is this f***ing real?’ before pulling the trigger on the post.
‘My hands were shaking,’ Charania shared. ‘You had to make sure every detail was right. You had to make sure there was no typo. I just remember, my hands were trembling.
‘I didn’t have a graphic to go with it, because it was so sudden. … It’s not like you make a Luka Doncic graphic beforehand.’
Charania added that he first heard of ‘something going on with the Lakers and Mavericks’ around 11pm on February 1 while preparing for a flight to Bristol ahead of the trade deadline.
Shams Charania gave the inside story of how he broke the Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis trade
The news reportedly shocked NBA executives, including those involved in the trade.
‘You hear about one player. Obviously, wasn’t Luka or AD. You hear about this player getting traded here. OK, interesting.
‘I’m digging more and more. By person two, three, I hear: Hood-Schifino is going to Utah, it’s a three-team trade. Markieff Morris is going to the Lakers too, and Maxi Kleber. And I’m picking all these pieces apart, and I’m like, ‘What’s the trade? What is going on here?’
‘By the time I got to the fourth or fifth person, I got all the details of the trade. I made one more call. I didn’t even say on that call—I basically was like, ‘Is this f**king real?’ And the person was like, ‘Yeah, it’s real.”
Charania said he posted about the trade ‘five to seven minutes’ after gathering the details.
‘After that, my phone was a mess,’ Charania said. ‘I had up to 300 text messages. … Everybody with the same message: ‘Did you get hacked? Did you get hacked? Check your phone, you got hacked.”
Charania followed up with a post that stated ‘Yes, this is real.’ He also told the hosts that he did not process the trade until the next day.
Doncic almost immediately found his footing in purple and gold since the shocking trade
Davis fell to injury in his first game with the Mavericks shortly before Kyrie Irving’s ACL tear
‘I look back at my first ESPN hit that I did at almost midnight my time, and I said, ‘This is one of the biggest trades in recent history in the NBA,” Charania said.
‘And I was looking at the reaction, and I’m like, this is the biggest trade in recent history. I don’t know why I said ‘one of.’ I think I was still trying to process in the moment.’
Since the trade, the Lakers have gone 9-5 with Doncic in the lineup, including a triple-double performance in a win over the Mavericks. The success brought the Lakers to the fourth seed in the Western Conference at 40-24.
Meanwhile, Davis fell to injury in his first game with the Mavericks. Not long after, Dallas lost Kyrie Irving to an ACL tear. The Mavs sit tenth in the West with a 33-34 record.
